The Chinese Israel bashing in response to China bashing on Israeli media

A few weeks back, during the Olympic games in Beijing, I wrote about China bashing in some of the Israeli media and my concern over the uprising trend of biased if not ignorant reporting about China. I was attempting to promote more cultural understanding and sensitivity in media reporting and highlight some of the wonder Israel-China cultural interchanges that I frequently write about. But, I had no way of guessing it might become the center of attention and serve as a basis for counter Israel bashing by Chinese. Details later, but first some background.

I gave the following example with three posts about two shows :

• Sino-Phobia : Israeli Media on China and the Chinese
• More Sino Phobia : China Bashing in Israeli media
• Sino-Phobia continued : Israeli media bias against China

Rachel, in Hebrew, also commented on the western and Israeli media bias.

I further commented about Oren Nehari’s remarks about the Chinese Olympics opening ceremony, publishing a letter by a concerned Chinese professor living in Israel :

• Chinese perception of Israeli media coverage of the China Olympics

Rachel, in Hebrew, continued with some commentary and an interesting reply from an Israeli.

Now, Shahar Zuberi, the sole Israeli medalist decided to call the Chinese Olympics hosts “scums” or something like that (I do have a better translation, but it wouldn’t add pride to the incident) and all hell broke loose. The Chinese embassy in Israel canceled an event for the Israeli delegation, apologies were issued, endless articles were written about the stupid young kid who made a national mess out of the greatest moment of his life.

Then, someone picked up on the articles I wrote, and so a few articles followed with a link:

• Shanghaiist -  “China-bashing in Israeli media” with some wild disturbing comments.
• The Telegraph explains with “Zubari takes the wind out of China-Israel relations”.
• Jewish Journal connects it all with “Rude Israeli Olympic medalist ticks off Chinese, Peres apologizes”.
• Some Chinese blogs commented about it- 以色列——民族主义者的新靶子 (automatic translation)

Reading the Shanghaiist comments, the Chinese comments on Haaretz video , and the somewhat disturbing Chinese comments on this blog, I feel this is getting out of hand and I’m quite concerned with how this whole thing turned out. Rachel tends to think this is a Chinese overreaction. As for my response – those interested could read my response to the interaction on my blog so far (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Let’s work together on building bridges between cultures and promoting cultural understanding , rather than destroying them.